12
September 2013 A.D. Oliver Barclay Passes to the Church Triumphant--2nd Secretary of IVF/UCCF.
Oliver
Barclay, a scion of the banking family and second General Secretary of
IVF/UCCF, died at his home in Leicester yesterday, 12 September 2013, aged 94.
He was born in Kobe, Japan, on
22 February 1919, the son of Joseph Gurney Barclay (who served with what is now
the Church Mission Society). His great grandfather was the MP Thomas Fowell
Buxton who campaigned with William Wilberforce as part of the influential
Clapham Sect.
Oliver first joined the small
IVF team in 1945, having completed a doctorate in zoology. His original
hope was to teach in one of China’s newer universities, but Douglas Johnson,
IVF founding General Secretary (always known as DJ), persuaded him to defer his
departure by two years. As Oliver’s newly-created role as Assistant Secretary
took shape, it soon became clear that the universities of Britain and Ireland
would instead be his life’s work.
Oliver Barclay served for two
years as a wartime President of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union
(CICCU) and as Chairman of the students’ national IVF Executive
Committee. From his days in Trinity College, Cambridge, he formed a
lifelong friendship with John Stott, also at Trinity, and two years his junior.
Both men would serve as lifetime Honorary Vice-Presidents of the CICCU.
As Chair of the student
national IVF Executive, Oliver was privy to DJ’s plans that the IVF should
found a Centre for Biblical Research in a university town, to strengthen the
roots of the church in the then very liberal Theology faculties of the
universities. What would soon become Tyndale House, Cambridge (secured in 1944
and opened in 1945) had originally belonged to a member of the Barclay family.
When Oliver heard it was to be sold, he conferred straight away with DJ, as he
could see the strategic benefit of its location, close to Ridley Hall and the
Cambridge University Library. Financial help from John Laing (later Sir John
Laing of J W Laing Construction) and others made the purchase possible, and
Tyndale House now hosts one of the finest libraries for biblical research in
the world.
In 1953, Oliver became the
first IVF Universities Secretary, supporting the IVF travelling secretaries
[now UCCF staff workers] around the four nations. The liberal hold in the
university theology faculties, and in the churches, created much opposition to
evangelical influences among students. When news broke in 1954 of the
invitation by the CICCU to the US evangelist Billy Graham to lead the 1955
triennial university mission, with John Stott as his Chief Assistant Missioner,
The Times carried a lengthy correspondence on the matter. This was of
such substance that it was later published (by The Times) as a separate
booklet.
In 1963 the government’s
Robbins Report was published, which led to massive expansion in higher
education. In 1964 Oliver Barclay succeeded Douglas Johnson as IVF
General Secretary. This was the same year his first wife, Dorothy, a consultant
surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital (whom he had married in 1949) died of
cancer, leaving four children. The following year, Oliver married Daisy Hickey,
a family friend.
Oliver Barclay steered the
Inter-Varsity Fellowship through its own significant expansion to engage with
the times, as new universities and colleges were founded, and as a surge of
change swept through societal norms. In 1974, under Dr Barclay’s
leadership, the IVF office was relocated from Bedford Square in central London
to De Montfort Street, Leicester, and in 1975 the movement’s name was changed
to the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) to reflect the
growing work in the polytechnics and colleges of education. Its publishing
wing, by then known as Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) was the UK’s leading
evangelical publishing house.
Richard Cunningham, UCCF
Director writes: ‘Oliver was an able academic, author, mentor and leader, and a
great friend to so many. And Daisy’s welcome and care of generations of staff
was legendary. Oliver always kept a loving eye on UCCF and when I began as
the inexperienced leader of the work he had nurtured for so many years, I
greatly looked forward to my termly meal with him and the wise letter that
always followed.’
Oliver Barclay urged
clear-thinking evangelical graduates to consider two major directions: to
pursue an academic career; or if ordained to apply for vacant churches in
university towns. Gradually the tide of liberalism began to turn. Oliver
was succeeded in 1980 by Robin Wells then a scientific Advisor to the South
African Government, whom Oliver had first met while Robin was a doctoral
student at Imperial College. This was just as a second stage of growth in
tertiary education was beginning. Under Robin Wells from the mid-late 1980s the
regional teams would be formed, opening the way for the appointment, under Bob
Horn’s leadership, of the first relay workers.
In retirement, Dr Barclay
continued to serve on the IVP long-range planning group, and was instrumental
in the founding of the UCCF Research Council to oversee the work of Tyndale House
in Cambridge and the new Whitefield Institute in Oxford. He was co-founder in
1989 of the journal Science and Christian Belief, joint organ of the
Victoria Institute and of Christians in Science, formerly the Research
Scientists Christian Fellowship, which traced its roots back to a small group
of research scientists Oliver had first drawn together in his student days.
Oliver served on the Executive
Committee of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) from
1959-1983, and as its chair from 1971-79. He served as an Honorary
Vice-President from 1983-91, and was always particularly thrilled to see its
pioneering work pass into the hands of national leaders. This global movement
now has presence in over 150 nations.
Oliver Barclay wrote several
books including Evangelicalism in Britain 1935-1995 (IVP, 1997) to which
he brought a unique perspective. For some titles he adopted the pseudonym A N
Triton. In the 1980s he edited a book series entitled When Christians
Disagree himself contributing to the volume on Pacifism and War.
Here he showed how, now more informed than in his student years when he
espoused the pacifist convictions of his Quaker forebears, he had moved
to adopt the Just War theory.
He had no formal theological
training but developed in himself – and cultivated in his staff – the ability
to ‘think theologically’. He read through Calvin’s Institutes each year
and prayed daily for a deeper understanding of the meaning of the death of
Christ. He never lost sight of his dual task, to strengthen a witness to Christ
both in the student world and among faculty. He followed news of UCCF missions
closely until recent months, and remained as convinced as he had been in his
early days that ministry in the university world was the most strategic
way to build a thoughtful acceptance of biblical truth.
We thank God for Oliver
Barclay’s tenacity and far-sightedness, his shrewd judgment and his passion for
the gospel; and we commend his widow Daisy and his four children to your
prayers.
News of the Thanksgiving
Service will be announced.
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